Featured Issue What happened to Catholic Ireland?

Last week, Professor John McCarthy addressed the Iona Institute on the subject "What Happened to Catholic Ireland?"

Professor McCarthy, an Irish-American historian who is a practicing Catholic, suggested that Ireland had moved from a culture in which there was "piety and obedience in abundance" to one in which there is "outright hostility" to the Church.

He told a packed room in Buswell's Hotel that that there had been, in the past "an unhealthy linking of religion and nationalism".

For some, he suggested, Catholicism "might have been an expression of Irishness, much like enthusiasm for the national sports".